


If I Rise on the Wings of the Dawn

by daleyka



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, POV Foggy Nelson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 22:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16376588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daleyka/pseuds/daleyka
Summary: Something's definitely wrong with Matt. All you know is, you just hope he doesn't take off again. And that whatever it is, he'll let you in on it this time.( Just some fluffy non-romantic nonsense between Matt and Foggy – set after S3, with some very mild spoilers.)





	If I Rise on the Wings of the Dawn

  


The fourth time you go out with Matt for lunch (if this is really Matt, and you’re still not totally sure about that) he walks straight into a metal lamppost. It’s only your hand, reaching out for him, that steadies the impact, pushing him away.

‘What the fuck?’ You hear your own voice as shrill, hysterical. It’s been a rough few days. Even though you don’t regret a thing, you’re tired of the new job, of the slightly fractured relationship, and above all else, of this stubborn asshole you’ve come to call a best friend, he who still lapses into moody silence, whose smiles come less frequently now than before. ‘You almost walked into a lamppost.’

Matt does something complicated with his face, which might be a scowl, or a smile. You have no idea what he intends to signify. You don’t really know him the way you used to. Sometimes, it’s him. It’s your best friend, the guy you know better than yourself. There are times when you want to cry, because you look at him, and he’s really there. He’s alive, and whole, and you think that – if you could, if men did this, you might put your arms around him and never let go. Other times, it’s –

Who is it then, in those other moments? It’s a person you’ve never met, something closer to a machine, or an animal. Some movement, some sharp, swift blow of iron, some claw and tooth.

He, the other one, swings from buildings and leaps across skylines and does heroic, impossible things. He balances worlds and fates on his fingers as he leaps the New York sky. However, you’re fairly certain he doesn’t walk into lampposts. Neither does your Matt, not as far as you know.

So who the fuck is this guy, this third Matt you’ve just saved from a black eye, and who is currently walking forward for all the world like nothing has happened?

 There’s something odd in his face. Since a couple of days ago, you’ve been worried about him, that he might soon abandon this venture, this attempted new life. You see a kind of boredom in his expression, as if he can’t make the effort to concentrate on what you’re saying. He smiles less, far less than when you first decided you’d go back into business together. You enjoyed that first week or so, the Chinese take outs, helping him to fix up his apartment, Matt being Matt again. How soon it faded.

Now he’s walking a little oddly. It looks like he has a limp, but as far as you know, he didn’t have one earlier today – and unless during the time he went to the restroom he got into a fight (which is, admittedly, quite possible), there’s no reason for him to have one now.

‘Are you drunk or something?’ you ask him, suddenly fearing that among his other vices, he may have taken up alcoholism. It would make sense. The clumsiness, the slightly rougher speech, the way he’s not been following conversation as astutely as he might the last few days. Plus it’s Matt, and he’s a self-destructive asshole who’d rather get pummelled than ask anyone for help.

 So would you be that surprised, at this point? Would anything about this idiot surprise you?

He shakes his head. ‘I’m not drunk, Foggy.’

It looks like he might lurch off, set off walking again. Except he’s not facing the right way. He puts his foot outwards, as if to stride forward, and for a blind panicked second you think he’s going to actually walk into the road. Someone honks their horn at him and he jumps, sets his foot back.

You put out your hand to steady him again, suddenly conscious of exactly how big New York is, and exactly how blind your best friend is. The road hums with traffic, stalled, expectant. Suddenly the lights flick to green and a roar of movement sets up, a thrum of engines. Over the noise, you can hardly hear yourself.

‘What’s going on, Matt?’

He lets you pull him to the side, safely away from the road.

‘I –‘ he starts to say, but then seems to think better, or worse, of it and comes to a halt. You think you recognise the look on his face now. It’s the one he used to have before exams, when he thought he wouldn’t pass. Worry, anxiety.

Your throat tightens. ‘Are you sick?’

He shrugs, not wanting to say. Asshole. Maybe he is really sick. Maybe he’s got some sort of terrible disease. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible he’s bashed his body to pieces punching bad guys and he’s just cracked a rib. Something like that. With him, Daredevil, it’s always the worst case scenario, isn’t it? Maybe he scaled a burning building. Maybe he walked a pit of knives. Maybe he inhaled asbestos to defend a young virgin’s honour from an evil Chinese crime syndicate.

You really don’t want to think about it. What he might and might not have done. Because you know that his capacity for self-destruction, and for self-sacrifice which comes to the same thing in the end, is limitless. You know that he would scale that building, walk that pit. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do.

Nothing, that is, except talk to you.

‘Look,’ you say. You don’t want to say what’s going on? Fine. What’s new? But I don’t think you can get from here to home without some help. Not unless you want to get home on a stretcher, after six months recovery because you walked into traffic.’

He pulls that same expression, the first one. Something that might be a smile, or might be pain.

‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘I don’t need help.’

‘Bullshit,’ you say.

 Luckily, a taxi chooses that moment to careen past, and with your outstretched hand, you save the rest of the conversation. He doesn’t put up a protest when you usher him into the cab, but he doesn’t say anything either. The ride passes in stony silence.

As the streets glide past your window, you watch him. He sits staring blankly forwards, expressionless and ill at ease. He turns to you at one point, as if he knows you’re watching. Startled, you turn away from him. It’s rude to stare. Even, or perhaps especially, at a blind guy.

Although, with Matt the truth is, you no longer think of him as blind. Not in the ordinary sense anyway – you don’t doubt that he has no vision, in terms of colours and shades of light. You know that he has no idea whether the top he is wearing is red or blue, or the precise way that an Indian curry looks, its luminous orange, or the colour of Karen’s hair, or the neon of a New York night. He doesn’t see those things. That bit you trust. But whether that’s the same as saying he ‘can’t see’, because…

You get it. All at once, you get it. The irritation, the way he can’t walk straight, the slightly odd demeanour as he’s struggling to follow, the general lethargy….

It’s too ridiculous. It can’t only be this, can it? Because a normal person would have just said. They would have told you, would have assumed you could deal with it, could maybe even _help_.

‘You can’t hear, can you?’ you say to him. ‘You’ve got a cold. That’s why you can’t get around properly. Your hearing’s not right.’

He grimaces, a full weary-lipped, tight expression.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ve got a bad cold.’

The cab stalls at a red light, and you want to strangle him for being so walled off, so pointlessly, utterly distant.

Except it’s Matt, so you don’t. Of course you don’t. It’s not every day your asshole best friend comes back from the dead.

‘You taken anything for it?’ you say, trying to keep your tone free of judgement, possibly failing. ‘Or do you prefer to suffer alone and in despair without succour of any kind?’

He smiles at this, and your heart clenches, painfully. Matt is alive. He’s an alive fucking beautiful asshole. With a cold. You love him, you think. Whatever he is, however he chooses to deal with things, whatever he’s been through, whatever it’ll take to get things back to the place they ought to be between the two of you, you love him. Having him here, in this cab, this ridiculous person, is a gift you don’t deserve, something that you could never pay off – no matter how many partnerships you got, no matter which firms took you on.

‘I took something,’ he admits. It looks like the admission pains him.

‘Well, I guess it didn’t work?’

He shakes his head. ‘Not really.’

‘So can you hear me talking? Or is it so bad I should shout?’

‘I can hear you talking, Foggy.’ He smiles again, but it’s more wistful. ‘I just can’t hear the road. The vibrations of the cars. The windowpanes as they rattle. The breaks and tires as they move, the footsteps, the clicking turn of lights. I can’t hear the wind catching the trees.’

‘Sounds bad.’

‘Yeah,’ he says.

You’re nearly at his place now, which he probably doesn’t know.

‘So the last few days,’ you say, ‘you’ve been so weird because you’ve been sick?’

He has the grace, or perhaps the common decency, to duck his head. He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture of penance, of shame.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I guess.’

‘And you didn’t say because…?’

‘We’ve got enough to worry about,’ he says. ‘The firm, Mrs Jenson, the arraignment…’

‘Fuck the arraignment,’ you snap, and you’re surprised how much heat there is in your voice. ‘Karen and me, we need to know things. We need to know if you’re sick. We _want_ to know. Seriously, Matt. These last couple days, I’ve been thinking you might want out, that you might be about to turn tail and go off and do whatever it was you were doing before. Living in a sewer, eating rats and punching corrupt FBI agents.’

He shakes his head. ‘I said I wouldn’t do that. And I never actually –‘

‘Yeah,’ you say, cutting him off. ‘You said you wouldn’t. But you said that before. You said you’d trust us, Matt. And forgive me for saying it, but you didn’t do that. On the scale of how much trust you showed in us, in _me_ , I’d have to say it was about a zero.’

‘It’s different now,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry for not telling you. I just don’t like being - I don’t want to be dependent on you, or anyone.’

You laugh a disbelieving snort at that. ‘Matt,’ you say. ‘You’re not dependent on someone if you let them help you out when you’re sick. You’re a –‘ you lower your voice, in case the driver is listening, not that you think he is, not that you think he speaks more than a few words of English, ‘- a crime fighter. You almost singlehandedly defend this city, you’ve fought more people than I can name. And you’re a fantastic lawyer. You are the least dependent person I know.’

‘Not if I can’t hear,’ he says. ‘If I can’t hear, I’m nothing.’

The way he looks when he says it is all it takes for your anger to evaporate. You’re still mad with him, still righteously pissed off at his disappearing act, at his stoic martyr routine, his self-pity, his fucking ridiculous defensive behaviour that’s so extreme he can’t even admit to being minorly sick. But then, he’s  also –  well, the thing with being you is, the thing with also being Matt is, you don’t give up on people. You try to find the best of them, and you work with what you find.

Right now, the best of him is that he’s here in a taxi with you, rather than living in a disused basement or on a rooftop with a serial killer. He’s consented, this man, to come down to your earth and walk it with you. He’s not doing the best job at it, but at least he’s here.

‘It’ll get better,’ you say. The taxi stops to a neat halt at his curb, and you open his door for him, unsure whether he needs it, but wanting to help just the same. You get out first and when he steps out at the other side, you take his arm in yours. He lets you. It’s rare that you’ve had to do this – only once or twice before, when he’s been so drunk he’s been a risk. Even then, it was probably mostly faked. You probably did it mostly because you liked helping him.

‘As you know, my mom makes the best chicken soup,’ you tell him. At the door to the apartments, you wait for him to open the door. He does it smoothly, without releasing your arm from his. ‘And now you’re sick, it’ll be her life’s work to bring you some. You know that. All you’ve got to do is turn on that smile and say your thanks, and she’ll be practically moved in before you know it.’

Matt smiles. ‘She’s busy with her packing.’

‘Not that busy.’

You walk him to his front door, where again he turns the key in the lock without releasing your arm. The two of you step inside, and the building is as familiar as if were your own.

‘Want me to stick around?’ you ask him, almost certain the answer will be no, that for him to consent to take your arm is about as far as it goes with him. ‘Or do you just want to sleep it out, see me in a few days when you’re back to normal?’

Matt pauses, obviously wrestling with something. He swallows, takes what might almost be a deep breath.

‘Actually,’ he says. Whatever it is, he overcomes it. His face relaxes into what almost looks like the Matt you used to know. ‘No, stick around. Maybe I could use a hand.’

 


End file.
